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Book Cover for: Afropessimism, Frank B. Wilderson

Afropessimism

Frank B. Wilderson

Critic Reviews

Good

Based on 6 reviews on

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Longlist:National Book Award -Non-Fiction (2020)

Praised as "a trenchant, funny, and unsparing work of memoir and philosophy" (Aaron Robertson, ?Literary Hub), Frank B. Wilderson's Afropessimism arrived at a moment when protests against police brutality once again swept the nation. Presenting an argument we can no longer ignore, Wilderson insists that we must view Blackness through the lens of perpetual slavery. Radical in conception, remarkably poignant, and with soaring flights of memoir, Afropessimism reverberates with wisdom and painful clarity in the fractured world we inhabit."Wilderson's ambitious book offers its readers two great gifts. First, it strives mightily to make its pessimistic vision plausible. . . . Second, the book depicts a remarkable life, lived with daring and sincerity."--Paul C. Taylor, Washington Post

Book Details

  • Publisher: Liveright Publishing Corporation
  • Publish Date: Sep 28th, 2021
  • Pages: 368
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.10in - 5.40in - 0.90in - 0.70lb
  • EAN: 9781324090519
  • Categories: African American & BlackEducatorsCultural & Ethnic Studies - American - African American & Bl

About the Author

Wilderson, Frank B.: - Professor and chair of African American studies at the University of California, Irvine, and award-winning author of Incognegro: A Memoir of Exile and Apartheid, Frank B. Wilderson III lives in Irvine, California.

More books by Frank B. Wilderson

Book Cover for: Incognegro: A Memoir of Exile and Apartheid, Frank B. Wilderson
Book Cover for: Red, White & Black: Cinema and the Structure of U.S. Antagonisms, Frank B. Wilderson

Critics’ reviews

Praise for this book

A compelling, profoundly unsettling blend of memoir and manifesto that proposes that--by design--matters will never improve for African Americans.... Blending affecting memoir that touches on such matters as mental illness, alienation, exile, and a transcendent maternal love with brittle condemnation of a condition of unfreedom and relentless othering, the author delivers a difficult but necessary argument. Perhaps the greatest value of the book is in its posing of questions that may seem rhetorical but in fact probe at interethnic conflicts that are hundreds, even thousands of years old.... An essential contribution to any discussion of race and likely to be a standard text in cultural studies for years to come.--Kirkus Reviews [starred review]
Frank B. Wilderson III both thinks and feels, and profoundly knows the difference. I am not sure that I agree with what he thinks, because frankly, how would I know? But I hope that he is wrong, even though I know that no thinking is wishful. Read this book.--Fran Lebowitz
[Wilderson's] writing is powerful, nuanced, and lyrical ("Her hair was white and thin as dandelion puffs," he recalls of a visit to his aged mother.)... [his] passionate account of racism's malevolent influence is engrossing.